In a typical AC power distribution system in a residential or small business building, an array of electromechanical circuit breakers protects various branch circuits of the electrical wiring. Such circuit breakers utilize a thermally operated switch which, upon reaching a predetermined temperature due to excessive current passing therethrough, will "trip" and open the circuit connected to the switch.
Improved circuit breakers are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,949,214, entitled "TRIP DELAY OVERRIDE FOR ELECTRICAL CIRCUIT BREAKERS" issued to George A. Spencer on Aug. 14, 1990, an assignee of the present U.S. Patent Application, and in pending U.S. Patent Application entitled "CIRCUIT BREAKERS WITH INTEGRATED CONTROL FEATURES", Ser. No. 08/695,076, filed by the inventors of the present application on Aug. 8, 1996 and assigned to the assignee of the present application, which patents are incorporated herein by reference. The improved circuit breakers disclosed therein include an array of trip profiles tailored to the current draw characteristics of the various kinds of devices which may be connected to the AC power line branch circuit protected by the circuit breaker. These trip profiles, which are dynamically changeable, determine the current versus time configuration of the particular circuit breaker. Such improved circuit breakers overcome the principal disadvantages of the conventional thermally operated circuit breakers, including, for example, slow response time, inability of responding to differing in-rush current characteristics, inability of opening a circuit upon the occurrence of arcing (a potentially serious fire hazard), inadequate response to electrical stalling of motors connected to a protected line, etc.
Although the circuit breakers with trip delay override and the electronically controlled circuit breakers with integrated control features referenced above and hereinbelow as digitally enhanced circuit breakers, offer superior trip performance under a variety of load fault conditions, several significant new features and capabilities, if provided in conjunction with such advanced circuit breakers, would overcome the following shortcomings. Neither of the aforementioned advanced circuit breakers has the cap ability of storing substantial quantities of system data, for example in a high capacity, non-volatile memory, when a total power failure occurs. Moreover, the performance of an individual digitally enhanced circuit breaker (DE breaker) is monitored only by the internally executed program within the individual DE breaker. Further, no provision is made in such DE breakers to analyze power line circuit conditions that are common to all DE breakers in the power distribution system in order to obtain an evaluation of the conditions of the system. There is additionally no affordable means available, even with the advanced circuit breakers mentioned hereinabove, for presently monitoring, controlling or reconfiguring circuit breaker elements within an electrical power distribution system in residential environments. Nor are there provisions for communicating control information and system data between individual circuit breakers in a power distribution network and a control or processing device coupled either directly or remotely to the network.